Tissaia's Blush
by EvanescingSky
Summary: Benezia always wore the same perfume.


Benezia had worn the same perfume as long as Aethyta had known her. It was something called "Tissaia's Blush", which sounded far too much like something a knock-kneed maiden might wear to a school dance for someone of Benezia's attitude, but it was the one she had worn when Aethyta first met her, and it was the one she had been wearing when Aethyta last saw her. It was a smell that lingered in all her clothes, no matter how often they were washed, a scent that clung to her skin constantly, as if it had become a permanent part of her. It was a smell that burrowed into all their furniture, so that when Aethyta woke alone, she could roll over and bury her face in Benezia's pillow and breath in Tissaia's Blush. When they went to parties, Aethyta could tell when Benezia was weaving through the crowd towards her, because she was always heralded by the finger-like clouds of Tissaia's Blush. That faint flowery smell, underlaid with a sharp tang, that smell that was now tied irrevocably in Aethyta's memory with Benezia. It wasn't that Benezia smelled like Tissaia's Blush, it was that Tissaia's Blush smelled like Benezia.

When she left, Benezia had forgotten it in the house. Or maybe she had left it on purpose—Aethyta had never determined which. For a long time, Aethyta had kept it. When she was feeling at her most pathetic and masochistic, she would knock back a few shots of ryncol and breathe in the smell of it. Once or twice, she sprayed it on her wrists (and sat, weeping and biting her lip, on the floor, clutching the wrist that smelled irrevocably like _Benezia_). It took years before she hit that point of inconsolable rage where she hurled the half-full perfume bottle at the wall, shattering it and ensuring that her closet smelled eternally of the lover she had lost.

She moved houses not long after that. (The real estate agent went into the bedroom and asked _What's that smell? _and Aethyta told her to fuck off).

Once, on Illium, she had caught the scent of it. It had been more than a century since she and Benezia had ended things screaming and throwing things, since Aethyta had finished their fight by pleading with Benezia not to leave and take their unborn child with her, since Benezia had abandoned her last bottle of perfume in the house that had been theirs. It took her mind only a fraction of a second to place it, and it was like being rammed by a krogan in full battle armor.

_Tissaia's Blush._

She turned, and honestly, honest to the Goddess, expected to see Benezia at her bar. When all she saw were a gaggle of humans, turians, and a half-drunk salarian, she clutched the shot glass in her hand so hard it was a marvel it didn't shatter. (She was almost disappointed). It was one of the humans, wearing it, while she deliberated over the drink menu. Aethyta resisted the urge to order the woman out of the bar, and moved to the other end to escape the smell until she had to fill a drink order.

It was a cruel trick, that the mind could ever, even for a moment, forget a death. Aethyta had been thousands of lightyears away when Benezia died, but Little Wing had been there. Aethyta had seen the port manifestos showing Commander Shepard's arrival with crew. After, when she heard, Aethyta had gone to Noveria, hoping for—what, she wasn't sure. To claim the body, maybe. It had already been disposed of—bad for business, to have corpses lying around, even of asari matriarchs. Her belongings had been disposed of as well, or sold off—nothing sat around unclaimed on a corporate planet like Noveria. Aethyta had soothed the howling pain in her ribs by socking a company representative square in the nose and getting escorted off-planet.

When she smelled it again, it was on the Citadel. This time, she knew better than to turn and expect Benezia, but she was not prepared for what she did see—Benezia's Little Wing.

"'bout time you showed up," she said.

"…I know you've been following me," Liara said.

"If you didn't, I'd say you're shit at your job," Aethyta said. "What the hell's that you're wearing?" Liara looked down at her chest, and Aetyhta shook her head. "The perfume, kid."

"Oh. It's just…something mother wore. Tissaia's Blush." Aethyta's hands slowed on the glass she was wiping clean. "It…reminds me of her, a little bit." An old woman's smile trekked across Aethyta's face.

"Me too, kid. Me too."


End file.
